The Virtuous Fall

The medieval Church's concern with moral reform contributed to the emergence of a genre of literature in the thirteenth century dedicated to the vices and virtues. Inspired by monastic and scholastic traditions, treatises such as Laurent d'Orléans's Somme le roi encouraged the avoidance of sin and provided the faithful with a moral taxonomy that ultimately ensured their access to heaven. Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls and Meister Eckhart's Discourses of Instruction challenge this virtue‐centered approach to salvation. Relying on their shared claim that the fall of the just man is in fact a virtue, this essay argues that their moral theology is grounded not on the a posteriori act of penance needed for salvation, but on the a priori consent of the will. This alternative view of moral life finds support in previous strands of the Christian tradition, and in particular in Peter Abelard's theory of intentionalism.     

The Virtuous Tortoise

There is no philosophically interesting distinction to be made between inference‐rules and premises. That there is such a distinction is often held to follow from the possibility of infinite regress illustrated by Carroll's story of Achilles and the tortoise. I will argue that this is wrong on three separate grounds. Consequently, Carroll's fable provides no motivation to abandon the traditional logical separation of arguments into their premises and conclusions. There is no proposition that must be taken to be a rule and must not be taken as a premise.     

Virtuous Choice and Parity

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion on the nature of choice in virtue theory. If several different actions are available to the virtuous agent, they are also likely to vary in their degree of virtue, at least in some situations. Yet, it is widely agreed that once an action is recognised as virtuous there is no higher level of virtue. In this paper we discuss how the virtue theorist could accommodate both these seemingly conflicting ideas. We discuss this issue from a modern Aristotelian perspective, as opposed to a purely exegetic one. We propose a way of resolving what seems to be a major clash between two central features of virtue ethics. Our proposal is based on the notion of parity, a concept which recently has received considerable attention in the literature on axiology. Briefly put, two alternatives are on a par (or are ‘roughly equal’) if they are comparable, although it is not the case that one is better than the other, nor that they are equally good. The advantages of applying the concept of parity to our problem are twofold. Firstly, it sheds new light on the account of choice in virtue theory. Secondly, some of the criticisms that have been mounted against the possibility of parity can be countered by considering the notion of choice from a virtue theory perspective.     

Virtuous Norms for Visual Arguers

This paper proposes that virtue theories of argumentation and theories of visual argumentation can be of mutual assistance. An argument that adoption of a virtue approach provides a basis for rejecting the normative independence of visual argumentation is presented and its premisses analysed. This entails an independently valuable clarification of the contrasting normative presuppositions of the various virtue theories of argumentation. A range of different kinds of visual argument are examined, and it is argued that they may all be successfully evaluated within a virtue framework, without invoking any novel virtues.     

Thomas Aquinas on Virtuous Warfare

Thomas Aquinas, one of the founding fathers of just war theory, offers an account of virtuous warfare in practice. The author argues that Aquinas's approach to warfare, with its emphasis on justice and charity, is helpful in providing a coherent moral account of war to which Christians can subscribe. Particular attention is given to the role of charity, since this virtue is the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian soldier. Charity compels him to soldier justly, and by fighting justly, he is elevated by God to friendship with God. Notable features of this approach are its emphasis on the criteria for judging whether a war is just and its relativizing of the criteria for proper combat behavior.     

Right Action as Virtuous Action

I argue in favour of the central claim of virtue-ethical accounts of right action: that right action is virtuous action. First, I disambiguate this claim and argue for a specific interpretation of it. Second, I provide reasons to prefer target-centred over both agent-centred and motive-centred accounts of virtuous action. Third, I argue that an action is right if, only if, and because it is overall virtuous. Finally, I respond to important arguments to the contrary.     

论生态经济学的伦理基础

生态经济学主张经济发展的现实基础是人的感性生存;经济发展的动力机制是人类文明的可持续性;经济发展的价值目的是人的全面发展.     

Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity

Dual process theorists in psychology maintain that the mind’s workings can be explained in terms of conscious or controlled processes and automatic processes. Automatic processes are largely nonconscious, that is, triggered by environmental stimuli without the agent’s conscious awareness or deliberation. Automaticity researchers contend that even higher level habitual social behaviors can be nonconsciously primed. This article brings work on automaticity to bear on our understanding of habitual virtuous actions. After examining a recent intuitive account of habitual actions and habitual virtuous actions, the author offers her own explanation in terms of goal-dependent automaticity. This form of automaticity provides an account of habitual virtuous actions that explains the sense in which these actions are rational, that is, done for reasons. Habitual virtuous actions are rational in the sense of being purposive or goal-directed and are essentially linked with the agent’s psychological states. Unlike deliberative virtuous actions, the agent’s reasons for habitual virtuous actions are not present to her conscious awareness at the time of acting.

Knowledge and Truth in Virtuous Deliberation

Philosophia - The overall aim of this paper is to explore the role of knowledge and truth in the practical deliberation of candidate virtuous agents. To this end, the paper considers three...     

Virtuous Arguers: Responsible and Reliable

Virtuous arguers are expected to manifest virtues such as intellectual humility and open-mindedness, but from such traits the quality of arguments does not immediately follow. However, it also seems implausible that a virtuous arguer can systematically put forward bad arguments. How could virtue argumentation theory combine both insights? The solution, I argue, lies in an analogy with virtue epistemology: considering both responsibilist and reliabilist virtues gives us a fuller picture of the virtuous arguer.     

Genetically Engineered Traits versus Virtuous Living

It is fruitless to attempt to genetically engineer virtuous living. Prenatal genome modification could, in principle, establish desired traits and predispose us to certain behaviors. But, traits given at birth are not the same thing as a virtuous character that can be acquired only by self-discipline. The ethicist further fears that free market eugenics—the sale of gene modification—may become one more expression of the social sin our culture inherits.     

The Jazz Solo as Virtuous Act

This article presents a new aesthetic of the improvised jazz solo, an aesthetic grounded in the premise that a solo is an act indivisible from the actor (the soloist) and the context. The solo's context includes the local and large‐scale conventions of jazz performance as well as the soloist's other work. The theme on which a solo is based serves not as a “work,” but as part of the solo's stylistic context. Knowledge of this context inheres directly into proper apprehension of the musical surface; it does not constitute a separate plane of appreciation. I begin by examining the improvisational error. This examination supports the position that the solo is an act, not a work. From this position, I detail a new aesthetic of the improvised solo, grounded in the soloist's virtues. In a successful solo, the soloist's actions display a balance of two aesthetic “virtues”: compositional skill and a commitment to the spirit of improvisation. Compositional skill manifests in a solo as coherence. The improvisational spirit manifests as courage, spontaneity, and related qualities. These virtues often come into conflict; each soloist negotiates this conflict differently.     

Virtuous testimonial belief in young children

I lay out the challenge posed by testimonial knowledge in young children to virtue reliabilist accounts of knowledge. In particular, I examine accounts from Greco and Pritchard and argue that those accounts are too demanding. More specifically, I make the case that young children can have testimonial knowledge without meeting the ability requirements claimed by Greco and Pritchard. As a virtue theoretic alternative, I argue that an agent’s belief must be epistemically virtuous, but that this may sometimes involve belief from a trait rather than an ability.     

儒家的贤能政治及其现代困境

儒家的治国模式从根本上来讲,是一种贤能政治。所谓的"贤"是和"德"紧密联系的,主要是指人的道德品格,而"能"则是指一种治国的才干。在贤、能关系上,儒家未做严格的区分,甚至认为"德"便是一种最大的"能",因此儒家的贤能政治本质上就是"德治"。儒家的贤能政治在很长的历史时期内维持了社会的基本稳定,显示了其作为治国理念和治国方式的独特优势,然而在社会转型期的今天,其与时代发展的不适应性也越发凸显,从而我们又不得不重新审视儒家贤能政治的理论困境并思考其应对之策,进而实现其现代转化。     

Two Virtuous Actions Cannot both be Completed

This essay highlights an alternative tradition of understanding value conflicts in early Confucian thought. In contrast to a prominent position among interpreters that argues for the resolvability or harmonization of conflicting values, I argue that some early Confucians conceptualized value conflicts as irresolvable. In other words, when meaningful aspects of a situation come into tension with each other and values are threatened to be either left unfulfilled or harmed, early Confucians put forth a variety of views. Some believed that all values could be tended to as long as one had the moral imagination of a sage, whereas others saw the world as a place where irreconcilable conflicts between values could occur for even the most profound people. Within this diversity, I take up a view about irresolvable value conflicts where the confrontation with a deep value conflict leaves behind a moral remainder that can mar even the character of a sage.     

崇尚科学,营造纯洁的精神家园

学校是学生自己的家.在这个家里,不仅要能保护好学生的身体安全,让学生生活安定温馨,更要使学生心理上、精神上健康发展,不受腐朽龌龊东西的侵蚀,实现"性本洁来还洁去"的育人理想.